On Page Optimization: Analyzing Competition In SEO

A successful SEO process comprises of multiple steps and one of the important steps is analyzing competition. Competition plays the all important role in defining the growth of your business. If you undermine competition, you'll be out of the market in no time. Hence you need to not only identify your competition but also see and analyze how they have positioned their website to sell their services or products.

There is no perfect or specific time for analyzing your competition. Whether you are at the bottom of the ladder or at the top, competition is always going to be there. The only thing that will change is the face of the competition, the tactics and the technology. Competition analysis will help you to find the way to the top of the table or in terms of page ranking.

This article covers the various on page factors like Meta tags, keyword density, etc. that will affect your standing in the face of competition and determine your fate in a SEO environment.

There are basically three key on page factors you need to consider for competition analysis and they are:

1. Meta tags and titles2. Keyword density3. Special formats

Meta Tags and titles

In the recent past, the value/usage of Meta tags has gone down but it is still important to add them on your site. More and more weight age is being given to titles as they make an SEO campaign effective.

When you analyze Meta tags and titles, you are basically trying to find a way to enhancing the performance or effectiveness of a keyword to attain optimum keyword density. If you check a KDA tool then it will tell you what percentage of your competitors tags contain the targeted/primary keywords. Some of the advanced KDA tools display the average of these percentages.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is one of the key driving factors for effective SEO. There has been a debate going on for some time now to decide what the optimal keyword density is. Many experts feel that it is unimportant but the truth is that most search engines look for the various on page factors and to make SEO possible or effective a certain percentage of your online content needs to have the targeted/primary keywords. The existence of a certain percentage of key phrases will indicate to various search engines that your web site is relevant based on a given phrase.

But on the other hand when we talk about keyword density, it doesn't mean that your content will be crammed with keywords. You can always use an advanced KDA tool to help you find the optimum level of density for your business or industry. Once you get the keyword phrase, you can use it in the title and in percentages that vary from 1% to 3% depending on the requirement.

Special Formats

Special formats include different elements used within the content format like colors, highlighting, anchor text etc. The special format helps in making a particular part of the content stand out especially when a search engine is trying to spider your site.

Positioning is important for special formats as you need to position your keyword in the right places within the content on a particular page. You will also have to position the keyword and the entire content with respect to the page code.

A special format helps in positioning specific content and displays them as important with respect to the rest of the content. If you are able to use special formats well then it will certainly help you to improve your website rankings.

The bottom line is that competition will always exist whether you remain in the industry or whether you change your industry and the best way to fight it by analyzing it and getting ahead of it and always keep one step ahead!